Pricing Dynamics 365 Online? Here are 7 Reasons to Migrate

There are probably some good reasons your organization has put off upgrading your on-premises Microsoft Dynamics CRM/365 solution. Change is hard. Pricing Dynamics 365 online can be tricky if you aren’t asking the right questions. Your organization has many IT priorities and there are some significant pitfalls lurking in the migration process (read more about that in our Ultimate Migration Guide). And, yes, for the millionth time: these are uncertain days.

As good as those reasons have been, there are now some even better, more urgent reasons to make this the year you finally make the jump to  Microsoft Dynamics 365 online. One of the biggest is the writing already on the wall: it has already been more than two years since Microsoft last released an update for Dynamics 365 on-premises. And, if you’re still running CRM 2011, you should be aware that Microsoft will be terminating support for this version on July 13, 2021.

Now is the time to make your plan for migration and Cobalt is here to help. Cobalt has moved more than 100 companies to the cloud in the last three years alone. Trust us when we say this is not a process that works well with the procrastinate-and-rush approach. Below, you will find another nine reasons to get serious about this upgrade. Take a look, and then download a resource we have made specifically for organizations in your position today.

Maintaining your on-premises environment is costly and the price breaks for moving to the cloud are clear. Maybe that’s why you are pricing Dynamics 365 online today. This is one of the things we love to cover in our product showcases, by the way.

In addition to saving money, though, you will also save your IT department and all your other staff some serious hassles. Especially now that remote work is shaping up as a long-term norm and brick and mortar offices are in question, more and more organizations need the flexibility that a cloud-based CRM offers.

This is a huge selling point for your team and the impact you could have with your end-users. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online, when new features drop, your team will have immediate access.

There is a lot to be said for peace of mind when it comes to all your sensitive business data. When you migrate to the cloud, it will all be stored in highly secure, state-of-the-art data centers owned and managed by Microsoft. Their financially-backed, 99.9 percent uptime service-level agreement (SLA) means your data will be there when you need it.

How difficult was it for you to quickly adapt to your staff going fully or partially remote in 2020? How challenging is it for you to scale your IT infrastructure? If the answers to those questions make you wince a little bit (or a lot), Dynamics 365 Online has what you need. The ability for an organization to adapt or pivot quickly has made all the difference throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and that ability will only be more essential for growth and success moving forward.

Backups, upgrades, patches, and managing hardware, software, and support all gobble up the bandwidth for your in-house IT resources. You can eliminate all of that this year and help your team focus on priority projects that will have a more significant impact for your end-users if you migrate online.

This might be the most overlooked benefit in this decision — and the one that is most valuable in the long run. When you migrate to the cloud, you can bring all your customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) data together in a 360-degree view of your business. Even better, your entire team will have easier access to that data from inside solutions they already know, like Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Power BI.

It’s all too easy to be hyperbolic about “the endless possibilities” that today’s software creates. But after more than two decades of full-bore innovation on top of Microsoft’s CRM solutions, the Cobalt team hasn’t gotten anywhere near the bottom yet. Take a look at some examples now and watch our archived webinar about Cobalt’s annual Hackathon challenge.

You probably do not have a business application that would not benefit from what the rest of the Microsoft Power Platform is capable of doing. Moving your team to the cloud means that, in addition to Microsoft 365 and Power BI, they will have access to Power Automate, Customer Voice, and all of the new AI capabilities that Microsoft is adding to Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.

Our team loves showing off what’s possible — schedule a product showcase today for a feature-rich demonstration with your team.

So, You’re Moving to the Cloud. What are Your Migration Options?

Even if we haven’t totally convinced you today that your organization needs to move to the cloud soon, I’m confident things will align for you around that decision before long. If you want some help pricing Dynamics 365 online for your team, let us know.

When it’s time to plan for migration, your team will have four options: pay Microsoft; see if your current vendor can help; do it yourself; or work with a partner that has completed 100+ migrations. A side-by-side comparison of your options is just one of the things you will find when you download our Ultimate Migration Guide:

• Four hidden pitfalls of migrating to Dynamics 365
• How to evaluate the four options you have for migration
• An overview of the process Cobalt has used to successfully migrate more than 100 organizations to the cloud in the last two years alone.